Savannah

How to Dice a Carrot

This method is a very basic breakdown of the awkward vegetable known as the carrot. The main point of dicing is to create even pieces so that they cook at the same rate, avoiding some burnt pieces and some underdone pieces. Now there’s lots of fancy methods out there I could show you for cutting your carrot into itty, bitty pieces, but I find most of the time I simply need a quarter inch dice.

Let’s start by peeling the carrot if you like. The peel has a lot of nutrients in it, but it also contains some bitter elements known as alkaloids. The very mention of not peeling a carrot will cause certain French Chef’s to roll over in their grave, but it’s kind of fun to break the rules don’t you think? Besides, then you don’t have to wash the peeler. However I was feeling French so I used a peeled carrot for this demo.

Next lop off both ends of the carrot.

Next we’re going to make the carrot more manageable. It’s fat at one end and skinny at the other so we’re going to cut it right down the middle. This gives us shorter pieces that are easier to work with, and now we have a fat piece of carrot and a skinny piece of carrot.

Now you need to create a flat surface for the carrot to sit on. Go ahead and shave just a little bit off one side of the carrot. This will stop it from rolling around and you’re much less likely to mistake your finger as the carrot.

Roll it onto its flat surface. You see how it sits pretty all by itself?

Place your fingers on either side of the knife so they’re out of the way and slice down through the middle of the carrot. Now you have two pieces.

This is the skinny carrot piece and if it looks like it will make good bite sized pieces just being cut in half.

Go ahead and and slice across it, making your cuts as even as possible. Try and slide your knife in a forward motion rather than chopping straight down, this will let the knife do most of the work for you.

Time for the big carrot piece. Go ahead and create a flat surface on this one too.

And slice him in half.

Lordy this is a large carrot. So I cut each half in half. If you need even smaller pieces you can cut each piece in thirds, but I decided halves we’re about perfect for my dish.

Now hold the two pieces together and slice right across them. Repeat with the rest of the carrot pieces.

Tada! You just turned an awkwardly shaped carrot into the same size pieces. You’re now a champion.